Review: Robert Forster at Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne on February 14, 2020.
Robert Forster once wrote an insightful, loving homage to Paul Kelly in his capacity as a music critic for The Monthly. In it he pondered why, if Kelly’s songs “are so simple and the ideas behind them so clear”, more people don’t write like him?
The conclusion was that Kelly possesses an impeccable eye for detail that distinguishes his songwriting from the pack. This, along with Kelly’s uncontrived empathy, is something that can’t be achieved via mere mimicry.
It’s a question that could also be asked of Forster’s own career output. Across nine albums with The Go-Betweens and seven additional solo albums, his musicality has scarcely ever turned heads. In his own words, The Go-Betweens valued “commitment and ideas over old-fashioned virtuosity.”
Listen: The Go-Betweens – The House Jack Kerouac Built
Forster formed the band in Brisbane in 1977 with his songwriting partner Grant McLennan. Of the pair, it was McLennan who developed into a more sophisticated songwriter. Forster’s songs, by contrast, tended to be spiky, minimal, somewhat abstract and led by his Sprechgesang vocals.
But to return to the opening question – if there’s so little to his songs, then how does Robert Forster retain such a unique ability to enthral and inspire an audience? This was certainly the effect he had on the Melbourne crowd during this special acoustic gig.
The decision to forgo electric guitar and drums didn’t remove any momentum from the performance. Joined by guitarist Scott Bromiley (The John Steel Singers), former Go-Betweens bass player Adele Pickvance and his wife Karin Bäumler on violin/glockenspiel, Forster was in radiant form.
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The setlist consisted of roughly 60/40 solo and Go-Betweens material. All of Forster’s companions provided backing vocals and on occasion they united in four-part harmony. Pickvance and Bäumler could – and have – quite easily have occupied the spotlight themselves. But the aberrant, sometimes surreal, and always affable Forster made this a night of joyous entertainment for newcomers and long-time obsessives alike.
Watch: Robert Forster – Inferno (Brisbane in Summer)
Highlights included The Go-Betweens’ ‘Surfing Magazines’. Taken from the band’s 2000 reunion record, it gets to the core of adolescent wanderlust while also parodying misdirected nostalgia. Whatever the song’s greater meaning, however, that couldn’t stop the packed theatre audience from bellowing the wordless “da-da-da-da” chorus.
At 62-years-old Forster remains a curious figure in music. His songs are at once approachable and mysterious, amelodic and insistently catchy. But whatever his secret, it’s still friggin’ glorious. Never stop Robert, please.
